SHOP
Hey girl!
Let’s talk organization
It can be so hard to keep life organized when it comes to my blog there are a LOT of moving parts to keep this thing going. I would be so lost without my apps. I primarily work from my phone. With social media being my primary forms of platforms, it’s just easier to work from my phone. I would categorize my blog work into 60% phone work and 40% computer work (building blog posts, content planning, youtube video editing, etc)
They keep me so organized and I’ve found a good pairing of apps that work well for me so I wanted to share. No matter what content you might be creating (blog, small business, personal) these are sure to help keep your ducks in a row.
Oh man, what did I do before Canva. I’m not sure. I make 80% of the templates you see on my stories all the time on Canva. I had a graphic design minor in college so I do love to get into Illustrator and create templates but Canva has never made it easier to be a graphic designer. The app allows you to custom create almost anything. There are also thousands of templates to choose from as a starting point if you’re stuck on inspiration.
What I love about this app is how easy it is to quickly customize things. It’s really easy to upload and change out photos. This is how I do my Deal of the Day or Styled Zebra Daily collages. What I also love about this app is that you can also work from the computer so if I ever can’t get something just right only using my fingers it’s easy to get on my computer and use my mouse for a second. There is a pro version, but I’ve gotten on just fine with the free version!
I’ve gotten a ton of questions recently about the templates I’ve created and use on my stories and I’d love to do a full tutorial on how to best use the app. If you are interested let me know in the comments!
There are a TON of apps I’ve tried to use to plan out my feed content. I was using Planoly but I just wasn’t getting all the features I wanted with having the free version and I thought there was surely something out there that would work for free. I found Preview and I’ve been really happy with how it works!
The benefit to having a feed planning app allows you to keep your grid photos consistent and varying slightly to offer diversifying content. I try to vary poses (sit to stand etc) as well as color (not having two photos of me wearing orange next to each other, etc.) You sign into your Instagram account through the app and it will sync your feed to the app. Then you can upload content you are planning on posting in the future to see how it will appear in your feed!
I love that I can put placeholders for my IGTV/Reel videos (those don’t usually sync from Instagram on feed planning apps). It is really easy to upload and move photos around to get a feel on how your grid on Instagram will look. I’ve been super happy with it!
I work in Google drive for all my blog content. What I love about Google drive is that everything syncs and autosaves! I am able to work on something on my computer and then also pull it up on my phone using the app. I primarily work in the Google Sheets app. This is their app most similar to excel.
My content calendar is in excel and it makes it super helpful to see everything planned out days, weeks and months in advance. It really helps me stay organized and on task for each week! My content calendar is a template I created in excel that just works for me! I have different categories for each day allowing me to break out content for every single day which is so key for me and planning!
What did we do before Lightroom?! I’ve been using Lightroom for years since it is an Adobe product and I work in all the Adobe products these days! Lightroom is a photo editing app and allows you to batch or mass edit photos at the same time. This is so ideal for photos taken in the same spot, you can apply the same edit to all the photos.
I utilize presets that I’ve made myself and start editing every photo by applying that preset to the photo and then adjusting based on my skintone and other features in the photo! I get asked a lot how I edit my photos and my biggest advice would be turn the greens way down and the yellows way down (almost more white) to get a look similar to mine!
Oh Quickbooks, what on earth did I do before you… really unsure. It is SUCH a game changer when it comes to keeping track of income and getting things organized for tax season. What I love about Quickbooks is that it syncs all my bank accounts and cards together in one place so I can see all my expenses and income.
I just swipe one direction for a blog purchase/income related expense and then swipe the other direction for a personal expense. It’s truly THAT easy. Before using Quickbooks I was keeping track of all my blog income and expenses manually in Google Sheets and it was just such a time consuming process. Quickbooks makes filing taxes an actual breeze.
I got the Quickbooks for small business version and it came free when I filed my taxes this past year with the TurboTax plan I purchased.
I was looking for a video editing app that wasn’t super complicated and that didn’t require me to purchase and I finally found it recently! It’s called InShot and it makes video editing sooo easy. With Tik Tok and Reels instead of editing content in the Tik Tok or Instagram app (which I think are SO confusing) I’ll edit everything in the InShot app before uploading. Then when I upload to Tik Tok or Reels I can add text and music at that point once the video is cropped how I like!
For YouTube and IGTV, I edit my videos on my computer using Adobe Premier. It’s pricey but so worth it to me! I work frequently in Adobe products so I was able to easily pick up the editing process.
For Tik Tok and Reels, the content is so much shorter it is easier to merge content in an app on my phone vs sending a ton of tiny videos to my computer to edit in Premier. I like a lot of the features of the InShot app and it is sooo much easier to work than the Tik Tok editing app (in my opinion).
The InShot app definitely takes a little bit of playing around but once you get used to it, it’s a breeze!
These are the apps I am opening on a daily or weekly basis. Some of the other apps I use frequently as a blogger that I thought were a little self explanatory are the RewardStyle app, LIKE.to.KNOW.it app and Amazon app. I use these apps to edit my affiliate commission pages!
I feel like I have a really good roundup of apps that are working literally FOR me. They make my job so much easier and make my time so productive. I think that is so key when you are managing blogging and a full time job, I need to cut all the corners I can to save me time!
What are some of your favorite apps to use?! I am always so curious which apps people find and love let me know!
xoxo,
Zoe
Hey girl! Awesome post- I would love a canva Tutorial!! I’m paying for PicMonkey because it’s so much easier and I don’t know I’ve had such a mind block with canva LOL